


Happy Arbor Day

by Codydarkstalker



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Arbor Day, Drabble, F/F, Femslash, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 13:17:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12841983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Codydarkstalker/pseuds/Codydarkstalker
Summary: Ivy and Harley take some time to celebrate Arbor Day.





	Happy Arbor Day

Gotham was a city of steel and concrete. It was hard to even see the sun through the metal and glass some days, the sky and buildings and roads all blending into a uniform gray. Pamela thought it was one of the ugliest cities she had ever seen. Any point of green was choked out or cut down, the plants pushed back more and more by people. 

The first time she planted something had felt like a miracle. She could remember it so clearly, the empty egg carton her mother gave her, filled with dirt. The feeling of poking seeds into the soft soil, too many seeds, but she had been so excited! She had set it in the window, watered it every day (she had wanted to water it more, but her mother had been careful to watch her and not let her drown the seeds). For days, the soil just...sat there, nothing happening. She had started to lose interest, it was clear the seeds were duds and plants weren’t that interesting after all. And then...it happened. Green. Teeny tiny green shoots, poking up through the dirt. She had touched one, with just the tip of her finger, amazed at the small life that she had created. It seemed like a miracle, and every day just got better. The plants got bigger, leaves sprouting and uncurling, the stems bending towards the bit of sun coming through the dirty fourth floor window. She had made a chart of their growth, measuring the plants each day when she got home form school, putting glitter stickers on the paper next to the biggest plant heights (and the smallest, they needed the help). The flowers were Johnny Jump Ups. Tiny little flowers with purple, white and yellow patterns on the petals. Some people said they were basically weeds, but they were lovelier than roses to her. 

She had cried when those flowers finally died. She watched them wilt and felt like they were her children, withering away in front of her. That was when she knew. She was going to spend her life with plants, every day, she would surround herself with their life and beauty, even if no one else could understand their greatness. 

Being Poison Ivy was better than being Pamela in a lot of ways. As Ivy, she could let her powers do the work. She could manipulate the people around her to serve her and her babies, her precious plants. Every new pheromone, every new toxic bloom, was a gift, a precious thing to be treasured. She had dreams of turning the world into a paradise, lush and green, where her family of plants could finally get the love and respect they deserved. It was too bad people like Batman were so keen on getting in her way.

In some small ways, Pamela had the advantage.

“You got all the stuff honey?” Harley asked, snapping her gum as she poked through her knapsack. She had her long blond hair pulled into a high ponytail, poking through the hole in a white baseball cap, and she had a red fanny pack strapped tight around her waist. “All ready for our big day?”

“Yes,” Pamela answered, holding up her own large tote bag. “Seeds, fertilizer packs, gardening tools.”

Harley nodded and held her bag open. “I’ve got water bottles, sun screen, power bars, sweatshirts, trail mix, a first aid kit, some smoke bombs, a few packs of gum, flash bangs…”

Ivy raised an eyebrow. “Do we really need all that?”

“Of course we do!” Harley pouted and clutched her bag to her chest. “You never know what’s gonna happen darlin’.”

“Uh huh.” Ivy shrugged and pocketed her keys. “Well, let’s go then.”

Gotham in April was usually overcast or rainy, but they had been blessed with a sunny, if somewhat windy day. They exited the apartment they had been staying in, and made their way to the subway station. The underground stop was the usual mess of dripping ceiling, tightly packed crowds and unpleasant smells. But they managed to elbow their way to some seats and settled in for a long ride. 

The Gotham Underground was big and old. Tracks crisscrossed one another under the city, an odd mix of ancient lines and new ones created out of the old rubble. The fact the city was so often nearly destroyed meant that large parts of downtown needed near constant rebuilding. It also meant a lot of abandoned raised rail lines. One that had been obvious early on, trains were safer under a large chunk of bedrock. But the trains still ran past the empty stops.

It took less than an hour for the number of riders in the car to dwindle, and by the time the train had sluggishly pulled itself above ground, the only other rider was a homeless man sleeping on a row of seats at the other end of the car. Harley took a half a moment to see if he was really asleep before digging a pocket knife out of her fanny pack. It was a smallish knife, with a black textured handle and a belt clip. It also had a metal nub at the end opposite the blade, and it was this that she rammed at full force into the train window.

“Ha!” Harley laughed as the glass spiderwebbed. Another good hit in the same spot and a chunk of glass broke away, falling outside the train. She dug around in her bag and handed something small and round to Ivy. “Here ya go hun, you go first.”

The object was small, maybe the size of a ping pong ball, and bumpy, and light brown in color, speckled with bits of darker brown. It felt light in her hand. Ivy carefully took the little ball, pulled her arm back, and hurled it out the window. It passed through the hole and landed in the dirt outside the train, breaking apart into chunks on impact. 

“Nice!” Harley bounced a bit in her seat and clapped her hands. “I call next one!” She pulled out another seed bomb and hurled it out the window. This one bounced off a graffiti covered billboard and fell off the overpass and into the empty lot below.

They took turns tossing the seed bombs, aiming for big stretches of empty dirt or scraggly grass. The seed bombs were a mix of special soil, fertilizer, and native plant seeds. They would fall apart in the rain and sink into the earth, spreading seeds which would grow easily in the city. Milkweed, Black Eyed Susans, Goldenrod, Dogwood. Things that would flower and attracts bees and butterfly, things that would spread life and beauty. 

They were out of seed bombs when they reached the end of the line, so they got off the train and walked. The outskirts of the city were filled with empty lots, almost all of them surrounded by fences with chained gates and Wayne Industry signs out front. Harley pulled a bolt cutter out of her bag, and clipped the locks off. A few people on the sidewalks noticed but no one stopper her or said anything, they never did. It was one of the nice things about Gotham, people could be counted on to mostly mind their own business. 

The lots were an ongoing project. A game of cat and mouse they played with Bruce Wayne’s company. Wayne Industries bought up land, and then gated it off, Most of it was just empty space, giants squares of dirt left fallow because no business could grow in a city that was so often near annihilation. So Ivy made herself at home. 

Every few weeks or months, as their busy schedules of fighting and causing chaos allowed, Harley and Ivy would go to the lots, and garden. Harley didn’t care for the plants the way Ivy did, but she enjoeyed watching her girlfriend working in the soil, sweating and happy and dirt smeared, happily explaining the finer points of botany. Harley liked sunshine and mud and eating strawberries right off the plant, and letting the juice run down on her chin. 

They made their way from lot to lot, checking up on the plants. Once or twice Ivy stopped to trim something back, or adjust a bit of makeshift trellis. She pulled the weeds, even though it pained her somewhat to do so. She knew what it was like to be in a place you were unwanted. The edible plants showed signs people had been harvesting from them. That was a pleasant surprise. Two of the lots showed signs of other gardeners, a few containers of fertilizer stashed behind a bush, a forgotten pair of work gloves. That was an even better surprise.

The last lot they visited that day was the first one they had planted in together. The plants there had grown tall, and spread out. Flowers were beginning to bloom, the saplings had little green buds on their branches. Someone had dragged in a number of old barrels and filled them with soil, tulips were beginning to poke through the dirt. The Wayne sign, ugly and faded from too many seasons in the sun, had been almost entirely hidden by posters. 

“Community Garden,” Ivy read, tracing the letters with one finger. 

“Wow!” Harley bounced on her toes, grinning widely. “Honey bun! Looks like you got one over on that schmuck Wayne huh? I’m so proud!”

Ivy looked around the garden and smiled. “Yeah I guess I did.” She grabbed Harley by the wrist and pulled her in close, capturing her lips in a kiss. Harley tasted like bubble gum and cherry and sunshine, and it made Ivy melt a bit against her. Her own kisses were poisonous, addictive, but Harley had a kiss that could take her breath away, every time.

“Happy Arbor day hun.”

“Happy Arbor day Harleen.”


End file.
